Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Vogel bomb here. Americans as a culture
Speaker 1: are fairly interested in hygiene, or the country that popularized
Speaker 1: hand sanitizer, for example, but parts of Europe and Asia
Speaker 1: have been on the bidet bandwagon for a long time,
Speaker 1: whereas Americans are apparently fine with cleaning their bottoms less
Speaker 1: well than other cultures. But why It might have to
Speaker 1: do with the biday's long and illustrious history, popular in
Speaker 1: fancy European households since the sixteen hundreds. The original biday
Speaker 1: was a little chair or stool with a tub of
Speaker 1: water built into the seat. The user, after doing all
Speaker 1: of their chamber pop business, straddled this device and washed
Speaker 1: themselves off. The word biday means pony in French, which
Speaker 1: goes a long way in helping the user understand how
Speaker 1: to use it. Over the centuries, bidays became popular in
Speaker 1: at rooms all over the world. Eventually they became a
Speaker 1: plumbed fixture in the bathroom, sitting right next to the toilet,
Speaker 1: but they never took off in the US. It's possible
Speaker 1: that during and after World War Two, American soldiers visiting
Speaker 1: brothels in Europe and Japan noticed bi days were common
Speaker 1: in these establishments and began to associate the days with
Speaker 1: sex work. It's possible they thought bidays were used as
Speaker 1: a douching method, which was thought at the time to
Speaker 1: be a legit contraceptive practice. It's not so. Even though
Speaker 1: the style of biday most commonly used throughout the world
Speaker 1: now was developed in the United States, it had to
Speaker 1: be exported elsewhere to become what it is today. For
Speaker 1: the article, this episode is based on Hows to work.
Speaker 1: Spoke by email with Sarah Shearer, owner of Clean Water
Speaker 1: Bidays in Squim, Washington. She explained the old type of biday,
Speaker 1: the style that's a separate unit that sits next to
Speaker 1: the toilet, is harder to work on. They require a
Speaker 1: few thousand dollar remodel to install hall and they take
Speaker 1: up a lot of space. Most Americans only see them
Speaker 1: when they're on vacation in Europe, but they're still sold. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: More common these days are the biday seats, an attachment
Speaker 1: that it fixes to your toilet, replacing your old toilet seat.
Speaker 1: This device sprays your bone with a jet of water.
Speaker 1: It can be tap temperature or warmed with an inseat device.
Speaker 1: Depending on how much you want to pay. There's a
Speaker 1: front wash for cleaning the genitals. The biday attachment is
Speaker 1: less expensive. You can buy a nice one and stick
Speaker 1: it on your toilet yourself for less than four hundred bucks,
Speaker 1: and some more basic models for much cheaper. It's also
Speaker 1: more accessible than a traditional bidat, which requires the user
Speaker 1: to do their business on the toilet, stand up, scooch
Speaker 1: over to the biday and sit back down to do
Speaker 1: the freshening up. A shearer said. The first rudimentary bidday
Speaker 1: attachment was created in the US in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: It didn't get very popular in America, but it really
Speaker 1: caught on in Asia, where it's been engineered into what
Speaker 1: it is today. In Japan, for instance, biday attachments can
Speaker 1: be found in eight percent of homes and in public restrooms.
Speaker 1: Most are produced in South Korea and some in China.
Speaker 1: Using a biday may sound like a difficult process and
Speaker 1: could be a bit intimidating at first, but it's really
Speaker 1: quite simple and depends on the type of biday that
Speaker 1: you're using. You use the toilet as you normally would,
Speaker 1: both for urination and for defecation. The biday can be
Speaker 1: used after you wipe with toilet paper or without the
Speaker 1: use of toilet paper a totally personal preference, So what
Speaker 1: you do is locate the biday. There are three basic types, standalone,
Speaker 1: seat mounted, or wall hanging. For the stand alone type,
Speaker 1: you must move off the toilet and straddle the biday,
Speaker 1: either facing the water jet or with your back to it,
Speaker 1: again personal preference. For the type of biday attached to
Speaker 1: the toilet seat, locate the controls, which will either be
Speaker 1: mounted on the wall or attached to the seat itself.
Speaker 1: The wall hanging type of BIDAY will function much as
Speaker 1: a handheld shower device. Then when you're finished, by yourself off.
Speaker 1: Some bday models have an air drying system, which you'll
Speaker 1: operate with controls, and which can of course be used
Speaker 1: in combination with toilet paper should you feel the need.
Speaker 1: Some models don't include the air dry feature and necessitate
Speaker 1: the use of toilet paper or towels. Although the days
Speaker 1: definitely cannot ward off pregnancy or STDs, they can be
Speaker 1: a healing balmb for other conditions. Shearer said. We see
Speaker 1: them used most in the US for people who have
Speaker 1: a medical need. Crones colitis, colon cancer, irritable bowel syndrome.
Speaker 1: The symptoms that make life hard with these conditions can
Speaker 1: be alleviated with bida seats. General practitioners O b G
Speaker 1: y n S and occupational therapists send patients to us
Speaker 1: for a variety of conditions. We have people who used
Speaker 1: to get urinary tract infections once or twice a month
Speaker 1: come in and tell this they're down to three or
Speaker 1: four times a year after getting a bida seat. It
Speaker 1: can make an extreme difference. Not only that, but as
Speaker 1: we age, it's more difficult to keep lean, particularly if
Speaker 1: we develop arthritis or other rheumatic disease. It makes it
Speaker 1: harder to maneuver a wipe or wash, and infections like
Speaker 1: U T e S can be a lot more serious
Speaker 1: and older patients. Bdays can help with this. A sharer said,
Speaker 1: for a lot of aging people, the main thing that's
Speaker 1: going to keep them independent and at home the longest
Speaker 1: is their ability to toilet themselves. However, some research has
Speaker 1: shown that bidats can make some conditions like anal fissures
Speaker 1: and vaginal bacterial infections worse. If you're experiencing any kind
Speaker 1: of medical issue, definitely consult a medical care provider before
Speaker 1: self treating. On another hand, bidats might help the planet.
Speaker 1: While it's true the bidats use water, it's not as
Speaker 1: much as a luxurious shower. But the real savings come
Speaker 1: in when you consider how much toilet paper you don't
Speaker 1: have to use if you're using a bi day. Almost
Speaker 1: of the toilet paper sold in the US comes from
Speaker 1: the Virgin boreal forests Canada, which cover about six of
Speaker 1: the country. They're making the air we breathe in addition
Speaker 1: to the toilet paper we use, and the American lack
Speaker 1: of interest in bidays means that although our country accounts
Speaker 1: for only about four point five percent of the world's population,
Speaker 1: our citizens use about of the world's toilet tissue, which
Speaker 1: is why America might need to jump on that biday bandwagon.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article getting to the
Speaker 1: Bottom of the Biday on how stuff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Jescelyn Shields. Brain Stuff is production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it is produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts
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